Oh would you just look at this!

This one made in pastels turned out so SWEET!!!  I just love it!  I'm thinking some little girl needs this rosary for Easter or First Communion!  Don't you??

Well, I missed both boys' awards ceremonies this week, Sonshine got "Most Improved Student" and Gator got "Good Citizen Award".  I am sad.  But I've been sick sick sick this week.  Terrible cough.  Here's hoping it goes away SOON!!! 

Today is the LAST day of school!!   Bring on the SUMMER!   I got stuff planned.  It's going to be fun.  Gonna try to make it to some more of my list of places to go around Dallas too!

Sharkarosa, Ft Worth Zoo, Dallas Arboretum, Planetarium, The Heard Museum I bought a family pass!!, Family Theater Series, the Dallas Aquarium, ride the Tarantula and see the cattle drive at the Ft Worth Stockyards.  Plus the fountains to play in the water!  Plus I'm planning on reading the Magic Tree House series to the kids this summer :-)  And Sonshine starts piano lessons on Monday 

WooHoo!!  Here We Go!!

Wow!

So I got an email with these pictures....




And it says this is outside of Amarillo, about 6 hours from here.





And I thought, wow, wonder if this is real....you never know, right.




Turns out that a friend of mine has been there and says it and it's gift shop are wonderful!




I'm thinking come Spring Break (hopefully Amarillo will have good weather by then) when I get my 2 week vacation we're going to be making a ROAD TRIP!



As is happens, Sonshine has recently been fascinated with visiting Oklahoma (I've NO IDEA WHY!) and well, by adding about 20 min to the trip we can easily swing through the SW corner of OK on the way.......hmmmmmm......






The Groom Cross is located between Interstate 40 and old Route 66 going west out of Groom, Texas. It was built by Steve Thomas of Pampa, Texas in 1995. Mr. Thomas, disgusted with the huge billboards advertising XXX pornography locations along I-40 wanted to make a public profession of faith along the Interstate. Originally he wanted to put up his own billboard with Bible verses but could never find the appropriate verse. Instead, inspired by a cross built by a rancher in Ballinger, Texas, Mr. Thomas knew that he would build a cross. Built on private property donated by Chris Britten to avoid legal issues with the ACLU at a height of 190 feet, the Groom Cross is reported as being the biggest cross in the northern hemisphere.


Recent additions to the area around the Groom Cross include a memorial in memory of the victims of abortion and a replica of Calvary, with steps leading to the crosses, and a replica of Christ's tomb. The Stations of the Cross were just completed and feature life-sized sculptures of the events leading to Christ's crucifixion. The Groom Cross is fast becoming a roadside pilgrimage site with the number of travelers visiting the site increasing exponentially.

VBS!!!

The kids had a great time this week at VBS!!

The teachers and aides and teens all did a fabulous job. I think science was their favorite part every day! They made volcanos, lava lamps, sand art cross necklaces, water thermometers, and boats. They painted and drew and sang and danced and otherwise enjoyed themselves.

The best part is that for 5 days straight we had a quiet house in the mornings!!!

Sonshine's class:

Gator's class:

Sugars' class:

Awesome SonSurf VBS 2011 Video from Allison St. Claire on Vimeo.

Now doesn't that look like a fun Adventure??

This post is part of Cathy's Wednesday Adventure Tours Express. Click on the picture to go to her blog A Bit of the Blarney and enjoy other fun adventures.

first outing of the summer!

This post is part of Cathy's Wednesday Adventure Tours Express. Click on the picture to go to her blog A Bit of the Blarney and enjoy other fun adventures.



On Saturday the Dallas Museum of Art celebrated Autism Awareness Day!

To celebrate they opened 2 hours early for families of children on the spectrum to enjoy a FREE day of fun activities at the museum. In addition to the special activities planned each family was invited to stay after the exhibits opened and enjoy the rest of the museum and we also received a family pass to come again. All for the (discounted) price of parking, $5. It was truly a fun and exciting trip for my Hooligan Clan.

The theme this year was Movement.

Here are my mom and kids posing with Arturo, the museum mascot at the paper sculpture station. Sonshine drew a rendition of the large totem pole that's next to the entrance.

This area talked about spatial relations in art and the kids were given a clipboard with pictures to finish.

This area had a lot of fun places to explore:

Lego walls,

magnetic shapes,

fun walls!!

adding your touches to famous art.

Then we headed out to the courtyard where there were several fun things set up.

Like this water painting set. The "canvas" is some kind of grey material that turns black when wet so they could "paint" with water, then when it dried start all over! It was a big hit with 2 of my kids......who wants to guess which two??

Next the boys found the sailing car races....

Sugars, however was working hard on her masterpiece.....

There's Subvet helping Sonshine put an index card sail on his car

Then you wait for the wind to blow....

Once the breeze picks up, the race is on!!

Undeterred by wind, sail races or hula hoops she's still painting...

Quite the artiste!

Next it was time for an interactive music performance by a Music Therapist. This was a lot of fun! So much fun I didn't remember to take pictures till the end!

We visited "Arturo's Nest" which is a play room for the 4 and under crowd.....not that my kids are ever deterred by age limits!!

Then we headed over to the obstacle course to burn off the last bit of steam.

We zigzagged, hopscotched, threw bean bags, jumped up the wall, and crawled through the tunnel!

By the time the regular museum opened Mightymom (who'd worked all night the night before) was bushed and called it quits. We'll have to go back at another time (with our family pass! thanks) to enjoy the exhibits....

Guess I wasn't the only one worn out when we left.....

I'm always impressed when a company will do special things like this for our special kids and especially when they make them free. Subvet and I would never have attempted to take our 2 Autistic boys and Miss Prissy to the Art Museum, a place where noise and exuberance are generally discouraged. We are grateful to the Dallas Art Museum for allowing us this opportunity to introduce our kids to art in this fun and totally appropriate manner! The volunteers and security staff at the museum were fantastic keeping the kids reminded of what they could and couldn't touch in a caring and friendly way. The set up and execution of the different areas was very well done. Every detail was attended to, even to the extent of emailing us a pictorial social story written specifically for this event ahead of time.

Needless to say we had a terrific time! Well Done Dallas Museum of Art!

Summer is Coming!

(Just to let ya know, Sonshine got out of the splint after the MD appointment and all's well now! And life at work is downright weird, but that's a different post HA!)

Our plans for this summer are starting to come together!

We're going to do Vacation Bible School and 2 different week long day camps at our church.
In addition, I'm going to try and get some more things from last year's list done...and do some of the ones from last year AGAIN!!

Here's last year's list:

work on reading and handwriting with the kids
get Gator (and maybe Sugars too) out of pullups and into underwear/panties
begin teaching Sonshine (and maybe the other two too) to play the piano
go on family field trips every 2-3 weeks. ideas for places to go are: Sharkarosa, Ft Worth Zoo, Dallas Arboretum, Planetarium, The Heard Museum, Family Theater Series, the Dallas Aquarium, ride the Tarantula and see the cattle drive at the Ft Worth Stockyards.



Well for this year, it's just Sugars I need to get finished potty training. We're stuck on getting the poop in the potty. And we're definitely going back to The Heard Museum! We've been a few times and it's just wonderful. Plus the fountains to play in the water!



In addition to that we are definitely going to try and attend THIS:





I mean, how cool does THAT sound??!!!!

Since this is also offered in my area we may just have to take the kids to a movie or two this summer too!

My new part time job, wonderful as it is, is going to cause some scheduling difficulty this summer. So I may not get to do everything I want with the kids. But by golly I'm going to do as much as I can!

Are you looking forward to your summer? What are your plans?

on my computer desk sits an envelope....

on the envelope is a list of numbers.....which correspond to pictures.

I know they haven't been blogged or the envelope would be thrown away....but it's sat here so long I don't remember what the pictures are of.....


shall we take a look?

Oh yes! The Heard Museum!

We DID finally make it there a few weeks ago and had a great time!

Sonshine really liked the life sized, moving, roaring Ice Age Mammals that you see above....however my other 2 were scared poop-less of the noise. Fortunately a nice lady heard my delimma and offered to walk Sonshine around the room and read him the names of each animal! She couldn't have been more sweet and I couldn't have been more grateful! I grabbed this one shot from the doorway with a kid screaming and dangling off of each of my legs!

We were much happier outside at the small zoo animal area. As you can see we got there right at feeding time.

Capybaras.....

an albino Racoon....

ring-tailed Lemurs (my favs...don't know why)......

Wallaroo.....

On through the butterfly garden and then it was time to hit the trails and burn off steam!

Stupid me, I just let the kids wander onto any old trail without looking to see how FAR it was first! Turned out we were on a 1 mile hike!! nice and downhill across the prairie....but it WASN'T a loop! you reached the end and had to turn around and go UPhill all the way home!

For most of the trail, (at least the first 3/4 of it) this was about all I saw of Gator-boy...

blow it up and see if you can spot him!

There were, however lots of nice companions to keep us company as we walked...

This girl loves her sticks! I'm telling ya.

Once we made it back to the building (and A/C) after a forced sit down we decided to head towards that scary room from the other end and see what we'd missed by screaming standing in the doorway.

Lots of very cool stuff over here!! (that doesn't make noise!)

I was shooing the troops away from this clam shell when I stopped and read the sign again!

Then we decided it was time to get some LUNCH!

Except two of us were otherwise occupied when it came time to place our order.......

(psst. extra points to the person who can deduce what restraunt we were at by looking at that picture.....closely)

It was a great time for me and my hooligan clan. We will definitely go back there. There's going to be a life sized roaring moving DINOSAUR display coming next month...and the weather should be great for trail blazing by then too!!



and now the envelope is gone....
it has been replaced by the receipt from OXO for EIGHT 5.5 quart air tight containers that I just bought, so we can buy flour in 50 lb bags.

Someone introduced my hubby to Costco...I won't name names...but SHE has TWO blogs....

Time for me to head to bed and try to get over this damn bronchitis. I've called in 2 nights so far this week. 1 was my overtime night and 1 I'll have to take PTO for. I'd really rather NOT call in again tonight. However, since I hear through the facebook-grapevine that JACHO (aka Joint Commission) has been at the hospital the last 2 days I'm not toooooo upset at missing the fun and games!!

click the pic to see some other wonderful places to visit!